Around Here editor/writer

Athens-Clarke police recently arrested an Athens woman and a Watkinsville man for allegedly robbing someone expecting to meet the woman at an Athens motel room for sex, authorities said Friday.

“It was a setup from an Internet website where the victim made provisions to meet with a female and when he got there things didn’t go as anticipated,” Athens-Clarke police Investigator Lt. Mike Tyndall said.

Echo Nicole Ward, 30, of Arch Street, and James Lloyd Rice, 28, of Woodlands Road, Watkinsville, remained Friday in the Clarke County Jail without bond on charges of armed robbery and aggravated assault.

The victim, a 28-year-old resident of Sycamore Drive, initially lied to police about the circumstances of the robbery, according to police. He originally reported that he and his brother came home from an evening at Topper’s bar in Athens early Sunday and he was sitting in his car at about 3:30 a.m. listening to music when a man wearing a ski mask approached and robbed him of $160.

The victim told an officer the robber was a white man who fled in a red Honda Accord. The responding officer wrote in the report that he found a discrepancy in the man’s account of the robbery after interviewing his brother.

He later admitted he had gone to the Days Inn on Finley Street to meet with a woman for paid sex, police said.

“He was embarrassed about the whole situation,” Tyndall explained.

Ward and Rice were arrested on Wednesday.

Ward had pleaded guilty in 2009 in Philadelphia, Pa., to conspiracy to commit aggravated assault in the beating deaths of a 28-year-old man in Philadelphia. She was sentenced to nine to 18 months in jail for the crime as she provided information on the man who actually killed the victim, according to a story in the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Police had no indication the woman was under any type parole for that conviction.

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